http://thirtyconversationsondesign.com/index.html
“What single example of design inspires you most?” and “What problem should design solve next?”
EMILY PILLOTON // Founder and Executive Director, Project H Design
TONY HAWK // President, Tony Hawk, Inc.
STEFAN BUCHER // Founder, 344 Design, LLC
DANIEL PINK // Author
JOHN M. MILITELLO // Creative Innovation Team Manager, Google Sales Development
above are the five conversations I listened to. Each were very interesting. the Apple products were mentioned multiple times which was not surprising. And i would have to agree with John Militello about how the remote needs to be redesigned.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Monday, March 7, 2011
1. What are the advantages of a multiple column grid.?
2. How many characters is optimal for a line length? words per line?
anything from 45 to 75 characters is widely regarded as a satisfactory length of line for a single-column page. For multiple-column work, a better average is 40-50 characters.
3. Why is the baseline grid used in design?
4. What is a typographic river?
5. From the readings what does clothesline or flow line mean?
6. How can you incorporate white space into your designs?
7. What is type color/texture mean?
color: refers to the darkness or blackness of the letterforms in mass. depends on 4 things: the design of the type, the spacing between the letters, the spacing between the words, and the spacing between the lines.
8. What is x-height, how does it effect type color?
9. In justification or H&J terms what do the numbers: minimum, optimum, maximum mean?
10. What are some ways to indicate a new paragraph. Are there any rules?
11. What are some things to look out for when hyphenating text?
avoid more than two hyphenations in a row
avoid too many hyphenations in any paragraph
avoid stupid hyphenations
never hyphenate a heading
break lines sensibly
12. What is a literature?
13. What does CMYK and RGB mean?
14. What does hanging punctuation mean?
15. What is the difference between a foot mark and an apostrophe?
foot mark (')
apostrophe (‘)
16. What is the difference between an inch mark and a quote mark (smart quote)?
inch marks (")
quote marks (“,”)
17. What is a hyphen, en dash and em dashes, what are the differences and when are they used?
hyphen: strictly used for hyphenating words or line breaks. (-)
en dash: used between words indicating a duration, such as hourly time or months or years (–)
em dash: twice as long as the en dash. often used in a manner similar to a colon or parentheses or it indicates an abrupt change in thought, or it is used in a spot where a period is too strong and a comma is too weak (—)
18. What are ligatures, why are they used, when are they not used, what are common ligatures?
2. How many characters is optimal for a line length? words per line?
anything from 45 to 75 characters is widely regarded as a satisfactory length of line for a single-column page. For multiple-column work, a better average is 40-50 characters.
3. Why is the baseline grid used in design?
4. What is a typographic river?
5. From the readings what does clothesline or flow line mean?
6. How can you incorporate white space into your designs?
7. What is type color/texture mean?
color: refers to the darkness or blackness of the letterforms in mass. depends on 4 things: the design of the type, the spacing between the letters, the spacing between the words, and the spacing between the lines.
8. What is x-height, how does it effect type color?
9. In justification or H&J terms what do the numbers: minimum, optimum, maximum mean?
10. What are some ways to indicate a new paragraph. Are there any rules?
11. What are some things to look out for when hyphenating text?
avoid more than two hyphenations in a row
avoid too many hyphenations in any paragraph
avoid stupid hyphenations
never hyphenate a heading
break lines sensibly
12. What is a literature?
13. What does CMYK and RGB mean?
14. What does hanging punctuation mean?
15. What is the difference between a foot mark and an apostrophe?
foot mark (')
apostrophe (‘)
16. What is the difference between an inch mark and a quote mark (smart quote)?
inch marks (")
quote marks (“,”)
17. What is a hyphen, en dash and em dashes, what are the differences and when are they used?
hyphen: strictly used for hyphenating words or line breaks. (-)
en dash: used between words indicating a duration, such as hourly time or months or years (–)
em dash: twice as long as the en dash. often used in a manner similar to a colon or parentheses or it indicates an abrupt change in thought, or it is used in a spot where a period is too strong and a comma is too weak (—)
18. What are ligatures, why are they used, when are they not used, what are common ligatures?
Journal #5
Jonathan Harris
Cold : Bold
Gain: AIGA Business and Design Conference October 14-16, 2010
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/video-gain-2010-harris
Jonathan Harris is a designer that mostly creates online projects. He uses computer science, statistics, storytelling, and visual art as tools. He feels as if technology needs to become more human.
He worked on projects like I Want you to Want Me in 2008, The Whale Hunt in 2007, Universe in 2007, We Feel Fine in 2006 and the book We Feel Fine in 2009.
Harris likes to think about how the viewer/user might interact with the piece he is designing.
Along with online projects, Harris also does some writing.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Journal #4
Who is Bruce Mau?
the Chief Creative Officer of Bruce Mau Design. Clients of his Chicago and Toronto studios include Coca-Cola, McDonald's, MTV, Arizona State University, Miami's American Airlines Arena, New Meadowlands Stadium, Frank Gehry, Herman Miller, Santa Monica's Big Blue Bus, and the feature length documentary The 11th Hour. Since founding his studio in 1985, Mau has used design and optimism to originate, innovate, and renovate businesses, brands, products, and experiences.
Incomplete Manifesto for Growth - Bruce Mau
1. Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
2. Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.
3. Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to
be there.
4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
5. Go deep.
The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
6. Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
7. Study.
A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.
8. Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
9. Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
10. Everyone is a leader.
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.
11. Harvest ideas.
Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas
to applications.
12. Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.
13. Slow down.
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.
14. Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
15. Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.
16. Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
17. ____________________.
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas
of others.
18. Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.
19. Work the metaphor.
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
20. Be careful to take risks.
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
21. Repeat yourself.
If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.
22. Make your own tools.
Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.
23. Stand on someone’s shoulders.
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.
24. Avoid software.
The problem with software is that everyone has it.
25. Don’t clean your desk.
You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.
26. Don’t enter awards competitions.
Just don’t. It’s not good for you.
27. Read only left-hand pages.
Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."
28. Make new words.
Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
29. Think with your mind.
Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.
30. Organization = Liberty.
Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'
31. Don’t borrow money.
Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.
32. Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
33. Take field trips.
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.
34. Make mistakes faster.
This isn’t my idea – I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.
35. Imitate.
Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.
36. Scat.
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else ... but not words.
37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
38. Explore the other edge.
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.
39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces – what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference – the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals – but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.
40. Avoid fields.
Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.
41. Laugh.
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I've become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.
42. Remember.
Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.
43. Power to the people.
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free.
My choice for the week:
Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.
why?
because some of my best work happens when i least expect it to. which is usually when i have been up way too long.
the Chief Creative Officer of Bruce Mau Design. Clients of his Chicago and Toronto studios include Coca-Cola, McDonald's, MTV, Arizona State University, Miami's American Airlines Arena, New Meadowlands Stadium, Frank Gehry, Herman Miller, Santa Monica's Big Blue Bus, and the feature length documentary The 11th Hour. Since founding his studio in 1985, Mau has used design and optimism to originate, innovate, and renovate businesses, brands, products, and experiences.
Incomplete Manifesto for Growth - Bruce Mau
1. Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.
2. Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.
3. Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to
be there.
4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.
5. Go deep.
The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.
6. Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.
7. Study.
A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.
8. Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.
9. Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.
10. Everyone is a leader.
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.
11. Harvest ideas.
Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas
to applications.
12. Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.
13. Slow down.
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.
14. Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.
15. Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.
16. Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.
17. ____________________.
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas
of others.
18. Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.
19. Work the metaphor.
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.
20. Be careful to take risks.
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.
21. Repeat yourself.
If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.
22. Make your own tools.
Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.
23. Stand on someone’s shoulders.
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.
24. Avoid software.
The problem with software is that everyone has it.
25. Don’t clean your desk.
You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.
26. Don’t enter awards competitions.
Just don’t. It’s not good for you.
27. Read only left-hand pages.
Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our "noodle."
28. Make new words.
Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.
29. Think with your mind.
Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.
30. Organization = Liberty.
Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between "creatives" and "suits" is what Leonard Cohen calls a 'charming artifact of the past.'
31. Don’t borrow money.
Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.
32. Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.
33. Take field trips.
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.
34. Make mistakes faster.
This isn’t my idea – I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.
35. Imitate.
Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You'll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.
36. Scat.
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else ... but not words.
37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.
38. Explore the other edge.
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.
39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces – what Dr. Seuss calls "the waiting place." Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference – the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals – but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.
40. Avoid fields.
Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.
41. Laugh.
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I've become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.
42. Remember.
Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.
43. Power to the people.
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can't be free agents if we’re not free.
My choice for the week:
Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.
why?
because some of my best work happens when i least expect it to. which is usually when i have been up way too long.
Journal #3
Stefan Sagmeister, Yes Design can make you Happy
In this TED video, Sagmeister made some points about how if you are happy while designing then you will be more successful. Also it is important to get out of the studio and not sit behind a computer all day.
Theo Jansen Creates New Creatures
Theo Jansen created animals that will one day roam and live on the beaches on their own. Each creature has a brain that counts the steps so it knows where it is on the beach. Also there are sensors for when it gets close to the water so it knows to go the opposite direction.
David Kelly Human-Centered Design
Important to include behaviors and personalities in design. This way the person using the product can relate to it and have a better experience while using the product.
How Good is Good? - Stefan Sagmeister
"Commercial Art makes you buy things. Graphic Design gives you ideas"
what makes good design good? is good design for a bad cause bad? Is bad design for a good cause good?
someone needs to benefit from your design.
design can unify, and design can help us remember. Design can even simplify our lives.
In this TED video, Sagmeister made some points about how if you are happy while designing then you will be more successful. Also it is important to get out of the studio and not sit behind a computer all day.
Theo Jansen Creates New Creatures
Theo Jansen created animals that will one day roam and live on the beaches on their own. Each creature has a brain that counts the steps so it knows where it is on the beach. Also there are sensors for when it gets close to the water so it knows to go the opposite direction.
David Kelly Human-Centered Design
Important to include behaviors and personalities in design. This way the person using the product can relate to it and have a better experience while using the product.
How Good is Good? - Stefan Sagmeister
"Commercial Art makes you buy things. Graphic Design gives you ideas"
what makes good design good? is good design for a bad cause bad? Is bad design for a good cause good?
someone needs to benefit from your design.
design can unify, and design can help us remember. Design can even simplify our lives.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Journal #2
Dieter Rams: Ten Principles for Good Design
Dieter Rams became concerned with the state of the world around him and started asking if his design was good design. He developed these ten principles for a measure of good design.
1. Good design is innovative
2. Good design makes a product useful
3. Good design is aesthetic
4. Good design makes a product understandable
5. Good design is unobtrusive
6. Good design is honest
7. Good design is long-lasting
8. Good design is through, down to the last detail
9. Good design is environmentally-friendly
10. Good design is as little design as possible
Don Norman: 3 Ways Good Design Makes you Happy
Visceral
subconsciously attracted to a product because of the way it looks. Could either be the type fonts or color or just how it looks in general. People like the product because it is beautiful.
Behavioral
Another subconscious attraction. This attraction is based on the feeling of control.
Reflective
Can be related to the persons superego. This is all about the users image to others. What products will draw attention.
Thoughtful question: When a product is designed for looks, the function of the product may not be as successful. In that case, does a designer choose looks or function?
Dieter Rams became concerned with the state of the world around him and started asking if his design was good design. He developed these ten principles for a measure of good design.
1. Good design is innovative
2. Good design makes a product useful
3. Good design is aesthetic
4. Good design makes a product understandable
5. Good design is unobtrusive
6. Good design is honest
7. Good design is long-lasting
8. Good design is through, down to the last detail
9. Good design is environmentally-friendly
10. Good design is as little design as possible
Don Norman: 3 Ways Good Design Makes you Happy
Visceral
subconsciously attracted to a product because of the way it looks. Could either be the type fonts or color or just how it looks in general. People like the product because it is beautiful.
Behavioral
Another subconscious attraction. This attraction is based on the feeling of control.
Reflective
Can be related to the persons superego. This is all about the users image to others. What products will draw attention.
Thoughtful question: When a product is designed for looks, the function of the product may not be as successful. In that case, does a designer choose looks or function?
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